Xbox One gets improved visuals for video streaming apps

Late last week, Microsoft released a small software update for its Xbox One console. At the time, Microsoft's head of Xbox Live programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb said the update would have no new features, stating that it had "a few behind the scenes changes to prepare for the future." As it turns out, that wasn't entirely the case as the change log for that update reveals it added support for 10-bit HD High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) to the Xbox One.

What does that mean? Here's the official word from Microsoft's support page:

"10-bit HD HEVC enables video streaming apps, like NetFlix, to use lower bandwidth to deliver HD quality video streams. 10-bit Ultra color increases the video color precision from 8-bits to 10-bits - with 8-bits you only get 16 million colors, but with 10-bit Ultra color precision you get 1 billion life-like colors that makes your video more vibrant."

In addition the update included a few bug fixes:

Fix to address multiplayer issues across a few titles.

Made some small updates to the Party app to help team better understand issues reported by the community.

Fixed an issue where certain type of disc-based bundled games would not properly install